{"id":6069,"date":"2020-10-26T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=6069"},"modified":"2020-10-26T07:42:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T06:42:17","slug":"genuine-beethoven-or-not-quite-questions-of-authenticity-with-beethoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2020\/10\/26\/genuine-beethoven-or-not-quite-questions-of-authenticity-with-beethoven\/","title":{"rendered":"Genuine Beethoven \u2013 or not quite? Questions of authenticity with Beethoven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Beethoven Year is slowly coming to a close, almost everything has already been discussed on our editors\u2019 blog, from Beethoven in films<\/a> to his discovery of the trombone for the symphony<\/a>. What hasn\u2019t the man created, renewed, inspired\u2026. High time for the question: Is everything attributed to Beethoven really genuinely Beethoven? Or more professionally formulated: Where are there doubts about the authenticity of works handed down under his name and how do we deal with these today?<\/p>\n

Information about this can be found in the appendix to the new Beethoven works\u2019 catalogue<\/a> under the heading \u201cUnechte und zweifelhafte Werke\u201d [Spurious and Doubtful Works], though the section of scarcely 50 pages does not by any means list all such compositions known today. Since a composer\u2019s popularity also increases the number of incorrect attributions and obvious fakes, this would lead in the case of Beethoven to a disproportionate host of entries \u2013 and unjustifiably draw attention in his works\u2019 catalogue to items that simply did not come from him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The authors of the new works\u2019 catalogue, Dorfm\u00fcller, Gertsch and Ronge, therefore deliberately limited themselves to those works already previously listed and accordingly canonised in the predecessor Kinsky-Halm Beethoven catalogue as \u201cDoubtful and Spurious Works\u201d numbering 1\u201318 in its appendix or to other entries of works no longer meanwhile regarded as \u201cgenuinely\u201d by Ludwig van Beethoven. For research, not least owing to the preparation of the new Complete Beethoven Edition<\/a>, has brought much to light here in the 80 years separating the old from the new works\u2019 catalogue.<\/p>\n

In 1978, through meticulous manuscript comparisons, the Beethoven researcher Shin Augustinus Kojima succeeded in identifying several works listed by Kinsky-Halm, as creations by Beethoven\u2019s younger brother Kaspar Karl (1774\u20131815), who had had from 1794 so little succes at composing in Vienna that in 1800 he switched to the more reliable career as tax official. His D-major Piano Trio (Appendix 3) and a Piano Rondo in B-flat major (Appendix 6), both listed by Kinsky-Halm, are extant in a larger manuscript in the British Library, which had been inaccurately evaluated as an autograph by the young Ludwig because the handwriting was recognised as identical to that of another manuscript located there containing the Menuett <\/em>WoO 12, no. 1.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Piano Trio by Kaspar Karl van Beethoven, formerly attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven (Anh. 3). Manuscript in the British Library<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

So far so good. Only we know today that this Menuett <\/em>does not come from Ludwig, but from Kaspar Karl van Beethoven, and even that all 12 Menuette<\/em> WoO 12 can be ascribed to him. That their true authorship remained for so long unknown is probably owing to a deliberate falsification, for in a complete set of parts for these dances, extant in Vienna, \u201cCarlo\u201d was obviously deleted and replaced by \u201cLuigi\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the new works\u2019 catalogue, the Menuette<\/em> WoO 12 were thus shifted from the main section to the appendix of \u201cSpurious and Doubtful Works\u201d that now contains three genuine compositions by Kaspar Karl \u2013 inviting, as it were, the discovery of Ludwig\u2019s little\u00a0 brother.\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Michael Haydn (1737\u20131806)<\/p><\/div>\n

But well-known composers also show up here. For example, Michael Haydn\u2019s authorship of the joke canon \u201cGl\u00fcck fehl\u2019 dir vor allem\u201d is meantime amply assured. The work has gone down in music history as a birthday greeting from Beethoven to Anna Giannattasio del Rio, whose daughter reported by letter to the Beethoven biographer Alexander Thayer in 1881: \u201cFinally, I shall write down a canon of Beethoven\u2019s that my mother taught me to sing already as a child. That is, he once came to my mother and began singing, as follows: \u2018You are out of luck, above all, health, too\u2019 \u2013 he sang to her, then remained silent and laughed. When mother said that it was just not a nice wish, that her fortune and health should fail, he sang the end with the word \u2018never\u2019 on a long, sustained tone. The canon\u2019s music, written out, is enclosed here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

WoO 171 in Theodor Frimmel, Neue Beethoveniana. Illustration with kind permission from the Beethoven-Haus Bonn<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1888 Theodor von Frimmel reproduced the canon in his \u201cNeue Beethoveniana\u201d, then as \u201cBeethoven\u2019s composition\u201d, Kinsky-Halm listed it as WoO 171 and the pleasant anecdote has ever since been readily cited time and again in Beethoven literature\u2026. Only a century later the Michael Haydn research revealed that the canon had been printed under Haydn\u2019s name before 1800 and mentioned in a list of his works in 1814 \u2013 therefore, Beethoven was here by no means its composer, but only its performer.<\/p>\n

So, perhaps it\u2019s not surprising that amongst many other musical trifles besides WoO 171 from the sphere of WoOs, bogus works are to be discovered \u2013 such as the \u201cM\u00e4lzel-Kanon\u201d WoO 162, which has now been exposed as a tangible forgery. But would you have thought that opera <\/em>printed during Beethoven\u2019s lifetime would be of doubtful authenticity? Doesn\u2019t an opus number guarantee authenticity? Not necessarily, for the publisher (and not the composer) could then also be responsible for assigning the opus numbers \u2013 and the qustion of authenticity is sometimes not at all so easy to decide….<\/p>\n

Thus, in the winter of 1803\/04, Hoffmeister & K\u00fchnel published in Leipzig two arrangements of Beethoven\u2019s works whose opus numbers are to be treated with caution: the Serenade for piano and flute op. 41, which is still popular with flutists today, going back to Beethoven\u2019s Serenade op. 25 for the unusual scoring of flute, violin and viola, and the Notturno for piano and viola op. 42, based on his Serenade for string trio op. 8 (see also the blog post on “Beethoven and the viola<\/a>“). Beethoven sold the publishing house these arrangements, but expressly emphasised in his letter of 20 September 1803: \u201cThe transcriptions are not mine, but they have been reviewed by me and have been completely improved in places, so don\u2019t come to me writing that I\u2019ve transcribed them, because otherwise you\u2019re lying, and I wouldn\u2019t even have found the time and patience to do it.\u201d (Beethoven Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe<\/a>, No. 157).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

First edition of Ludwig van Beethoven, Serenade for piano and flute op. 41. Illustration with kind permission from the Beethoven-Haus Bonn<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The author of these transcriptions was most likely Franz Xaver Kleinheinz (1765\u20131832), a composer acquainted with Beethoven, who according to Beethoven\u2019s brother Kaspar Karl, had \u201carranged some instrumental music for piano and accompaniment under the supervision of my brother\u201d (Beethoven Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe<\/a>, No. 138). Although Ludwig had apparently monitored and improved the arrangements, he did not want to be named as their author. The publisher, in turn, had little interest in not<\/em> naming Beethoven \u2013 and found a solution genuinely ingenious in its ambiguity on the title page of opus 41, stating it as \u201cSerenade pour le Fortepiano et Fl\u00fbte (ou Violon) par Louis van Beethoven\u201d, and adding in two lines, \u201cArrang\u00e9e d\u2019une S\u00e9renade pour Flute, Violon et Alto, \/ et rev\u00fbe par l\u2019Auteur\u201d, allowing the possible, though not necessarily correct conclusion that not only the reviewing but also the arranging was done by Beethoven. And the publisher was not wrong in his hunch, for stated so beautifully at the opening of a short review of opus 41 in the Zeitung f\u00fcr die elegante Welt<\/em> is: \u201cBeethoven\u2019s name already recommends this very lovely serenade\u201d \u2013 which would certainly have been less the case for Kleinheinz.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Review of op. 41 in: \u201cZeitung f\u00fcr die elegante Welt\u201d on 22 December 1807<\/p><\/div>\n

If both opera <\/em>are no longer to be found in the main body of the new works\u2019 catalogue \u2013 as is the case with Kinsky-Halm \u2013 but have been shifted into the appendix, this does not express a new state of research, for the relevant letters and references to Kleinheinz as a possible arranger can already also be found in Kinsky-Halm. Reflected here is an altered awareness of the \u201crank\u201d of an arrangement by someone other than the composer and a certain respect for Beethoven\u2019s categorical distinction between his own arrangements of his own works for which he provided his own opus number (such as exists in his arrangement of the early Wind octet op. 103 for string quintet as op. 4 ) and those arranged by someone else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But what does the responsible editor of an Urtext edition do now with these works? Shouldn\u2019t the Henle edition of opus 41<\/a> state \u201cKleinheinz\u201d instead of \u201cBeethoven\u201d? Or at least \u00a0\u201cBeethoven \u00b7 Kleinheinz\u201d analogous to Henle editions of Busoni\u2019s Bach arrangements<\/a> or Franz Liszt\u2019s Schumann transcriptions<\/a>? Since Kleinheinz\u2019s authorship is probable, but not certain, this naming of names is, of course, prohibited from the outset. Opus number 41 is, furthermore, indeed related to Beethoven\u2019s oeuvre. So Beethoven remains alone on the cover \u2013 even though in this case it is not just<\/em> Beethoven within. But this is explained in all necessary detail, of course, in the preface by the editor Egon Voss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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